


things that we play at are not us

by zozo



Series: Here Comes the First Day [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Apologies, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24273037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zozo/pseuds/zozo
Summary: Catra has apologized to other people and it didn’t kill her. She can apologize to Scorpia.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra), Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra)
Series: Here Comes the First Day [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755943
Comments: 32
Kudos: 638
Collections: the corners of today





	things that we play at are not us

**Author's Note:**

> This story is in continuity with [those lights down there (are the lights of little towns)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240040), but can be read separately.

It’s the day after her glorious Spin the Bottle victory against the princesses, and Catra is wandering aimlessly around the corridors of Bright Moon’s palace, feeling more relaxed than—maybe ever. She and Adora had been up until almost sunrise working off their mutual tension from the game, and they spent the morning dozing in their tangled-up bedsheets.

But this afternoon Adora, Glimmer, and Melog have to do something magical and extremely boring with the Moonstone, so Catra’s lazily exploring the palace while she waits for them to finish. She finds some sitting rooms, a few that look like conference rooms, a ballroom that isn’t the ballroom she’s already seen, three separate libraries, and a swimming pool.

Catra realizes it’s going to take more than an hour of wandering to establish a mental map of this place. The palace isn’t really anything like the Fright Zone, but when the labyrinthine corridors start to feel like they’re closing in on her a little, she heads outside for some fresh air.

The palace gardens are, Catra is pleased to see, a complete disaster. Neglected for months after Horde Prime’s arrival and Bright Moon’s evacuation, then super-charged by the magic released from the Heart of Etheria, plants and flowers and vines and trees are spilling unmanaged in every direction, their carefully manicured borders obliterated. It’s beautiful and chaotic and alive, and she thinks briefly of Adora, a warm feeling spreading through her chest.

Catra explores further, ducking through the overgrowth, stepping over low deadfall and carefully avoiding thorns. When she comes to a clearing, she stops.

Something isn’t right.

The plants here are different: less touched by neglect, and even less so by healing magic. Branches twist in unexpected directions that hurt her eyes to follow. Blossoms abound, but their hues are all wrong—some have the vivid electric colouring of poison frogs, others look muted and sickly. It all feels… familiar in a horrible way, in a way nothing else about Bright Moon feels familiar.

“What the fuck is this?” she whispers to herself, and then she hears something moving behind her.

“Catra?!”

At the sound of her name, Catra yowls and leaps a foot in the air, twisting to land facing—

“Scorpia?”

“Hi!” The scorpion princess waves. “I didn’t expect to see _you_ out here. Especially, you know…” She gestures at the strange vegetation, “ _here_ -here.”

“Um, yeah, about that. Where exactly are we?” Catra asks.

Scorpia fidgets with her claws. “You don’t know?”

“That’s why I’m _asking_ ,” Catra snaps, and instantly regrets it. She softens her tone. “Sorry. It’s not just… some weird garden?”

Scorpia fidgets some more without answering, and Catra can’t understand why she’s being so hesitant—and then it clicks.

“Oh,” Catra says in a low voice. “Shadow Weaver. This was… hers.”

A long sigh from Scorpia. “Yeah.”

Catra hasn’t told anyone about Shadow Weaver, hasn’t talked to anyone—not even Adora—about what the sorceress did the day they activated the failsafe. Adora probably briefed everyone else, Catra figures. _Better her than me._

“Wait, hold on,” Catra says suddenly. “They just let Shadow Weaver have her own evil garden? At Bright Moon?”

“That’s what _I_ said!” exclaims Scorpia. Catra meets her eyes and they both laugh, and for a second it’s almost like—

“Hey,” Scorpia says. “Do you want to maybe… find literally anywhere else to be?”

Catra nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

They don’t have to go far before they’re back in the pleasant riot of the rest of the garden. Scorpia leads Catra into another clearing, this one filled with half a dozen large floral arrangements, each seeming to be a variation on the last. Catra looks around, puzzled.

“Perfuma’s designing something for the memorial next week,” Scorpia explains. “These are… kind of like her sketches?”

“Hmm, neat,” Catra grunts, but she means it—she’ll never admit it, but she’s fascinated by the fact that Perfuma’s powers are all about creation. Catra wonders what that feels like.

“Soooo,” Scorpia says conversationally. “Fun party last night.”

“Y-yeah,” says Catra. She tries not to think about the details so she doesn’t turn into a blushing mess in front of Scorpia. “You and Perfuma, huh?”

There—now it’s Scorpia who’s blushing. “Yeah,” she says with a soft smile. “That’s—that’s definitely a thing now.”

“I’m glad.” Scorpia stares at her, blank-faced with surprise. “I _am_ glad,” Catra continues, not without difficulty. “Perfuma’s really… I mean, she’s literally the most… You deserve someone like that. Someone who treats you like that, I mean. You deserve it.” Catra looks down at the ground and scuffs her toe in the dirt. Scorpia doesn’t say anything, so Catra decides to barrel ahead.

“Listen—” It’s almost painful, but Catra drags her eyes up to see Scorpia, who looks like she’s bracing herself for something. _She’s still scared of me,_ Catra realizes, and wants to throw up. _Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she be?_

Every muscle in Catra’s body is screaming _run away run away run away_ , but she forces herself to stand still. She’s apologized to other people and it didn’t kill her. She can apologize to Scorpia.

“Scorpia… I’m sorry.” Scorpia actually takes a step back in surprise, and for a moment Catra feels like she’s going to drown in her own self-loathing. “I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you. For how I treated you. You were—you were _such_ a good friend to me, and I took advantage of that, and I treated you like you didn’t matter, and I—I hurt you.” She sighs. “I know I hurt you. I can never undo that. I would, if I could… You didn’t deserve any of it. I’m s—”

She will _not_ cry. She will _not_ make this about her own feelings. She will track down Adora after this, drag her somewhere private, and cry on her shoulder for an hour and a half—but right now, this is about Scorpia. Catra swallows her tears.

“I’m so sorry, Scorpia.”

Now it’s Catra who takes a step back, one tiny concession to her still-raging flight instinct. She holds an arm across her stomach. A 12-troop personnel carrier feels like it’s parked itself on her ribcage. She waits for Scorpia’s response like she’s waiting for a firing squad.

But Scorpia doesn’t look like a firing squad. At first, Catra thinks she’s confused; then she sees the tears shining in Scorpia’s eyes. _Oh fuck,_ she thinks, _I hurt her even more. Perfuma’s going to murder me and I’m going to deserve it._

“Catra,” Scorpia says, her trembling voice barely above a whisper. “Do you mean that?”

“I _do!_ ” Catra cries, hating the way her voice breaks. “I _do_ mean it! I’m _sorry_ I hurt you, Scorpia. I wish I hadn’t, but I know I did. And we don’t—we don’t have to be friends, if you don’t want to be, but no matter what, I’m never going to treat you like that again, I swear!”

The tears in Scorpia’s eyes are now silently streaming down her face. Catra wants to crawl into a hole and die. She can’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t be repeating herself. She kind of wants to start repeating herself, just to forestall whatever Scorpia’s about to say. Probably _Fuck off, Catra._ Or _I don’t believe you._ Or _Leave me alone forever._

What Scorpia actually says, in a tiny, twisted-up version of her usual voice, is, “Can I hug you?”

“H-hug _me_?” Catra stammers. Scorpia just nods. Despite the anxiety splintering through her heart, Catra cracks a smile. “Since when do you ask first?”

Scorpia shrugs. “Since… now, I guess?”

“Well… yeah. You can hug me. If you really w—”

Scorpia crosses the distance between them and pulls Catra into her arms. It’s nothing like the quick, exuberant embrace they shared with Frosta and Perfuma right after the battle, and Catra can’t understand how she took this for granted for so long. All that time, lonely and cold in the Horde after Adora left, Catra had felt like she was starving to death for lack of love. And she hadn’t needed to—Scorpia had been there all along, overflowing with love to give.

Catra doesn’t feel like she deserves to, but she lets herself bring her arms up around Scorpia’s waist anyway.

“Thank you,” says Scorpia to the top of Catra’s head. “For… for saying all that.”

“I meant it,” Catra says into Scorpia’s chest. It’s a little easier without eye contact. “Every word.”

Scorpia squeezes her gently. “I know.”

“I really fucked up, Scorpia. With you… with everyone… I want to make it right—I’m trying to make it right—but…”

“There’s a lot to make right,” Scorpia finishes for her. She has no judgement in her voice, only understanding and compassion. Right now it makes Catra feel wretched, but she knows later the memory of this conversation will be a precious one. “You’ll get there,” Scorpia says in a soft, soft tone, and the last of Catra’s emotional defences collapse. She bursts into tears.

“Ohhhh,” soothes Scorpia, “there, there,” but Catra twists angrily in her arms.

“No!” she says with a harsh sniff, freeing one hand to violently wipe at her eyes. “You don’t get to—I’m the one who’s supposed to be—this isn’t about—”

“Catra!” Scorpia interrupts her spiral, pulling just far enough away to look her friend in the eye. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m saying it’s okay. Feel whatever you’re feeling right now.”

Catra cracks another little smile. “Did you learn that from Perfuma?”

Scorpia grins. “I did! Sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

“Totally.” Catra gingerly leans back into Scorpia’s embrace. “‘Feel whatever I’m feeling’…”

“Yeah. Better out than in, right?”

Catra, who had been approximately two seconds away from crying again, suddenly bursts out laughing. “Scorpia! That’s what we said in the Horde when we were shitting our brains out from food poisoning!”

“Well, I happen to think it applies to crying, too.”

Catra shakes her head and chuckles, her laughter slowly giving way to the tears she’s been suppressing for so long. Scorpia snuggles her closer, and after a second of hesitation, Catra lets her.

“Listen, if you cry,” Scorpia sniffles, “then I’m gonna cry, that’s just how I am, but you are _not_ allowed to stop crying just because I’m crying. We can cry together, okay?”

“Okay,” Catra sobs.

* * *

They take another route when they leave the gardens, in the opposite direction from Shadow Weaver’s patch. Scorpia’s claws make quick work of the dense overgrowth. They reach one of the stone paths that encircles the palace just in time to meet Adora coming around the corner.

“Hey, you two!” Adora calls to them with a smile. Catra’s the only one who notices the tiny furrow of concern in her girlfriend’s expression. It’s understandable—she remembers the last conversation they had about Scorpia, and for all Adora knows, Catra’s still simmering in unresolved guilt. Plus, she and Scorpia both still have red, swollen eyes from crying on each other in the garden.

Catra tries to give a reassuring smile back, and links her arm casually with Scorpia’s to show Adora the progress she’s made. _See? I can touch her without collapsing into a gravitational singularity of hating myself!_

The relief that floods Adora’s face then would be obvious to anyone, and she jogs the last few yards between them. “Catra,” she says, voice suffused with love, and kisses her girlfriend on the cheek in greeting.

“Hi, Scorpia,” she says to the other woman with a wink. “I hope you and Perfuma had a nice night after the party.”

A bright red flush extends across Scorpia’s cheekbones. It’s impossibly endearing. “We, uh—yeah, we sure—boy, did we—um… we did. Yes. Yes we did.”

“Good,” Adora giggles. She looks at where their arms are linked and smiles. “I guess you guys had a chance to talk?”

“Yeah,” says Catra simply, voice still rough and low, and Scorpia nods, squeezing Catra’s arm a little with hers.

A burden visibly lifts from Adora’s shoulders. She stands almost an inch taller as she beams at both of them, and for a second Catra feels like absolute shit that her girlfriend has been so genuinely distraught about the state of her friendship with Scorpia. _Will I ever manage to stop hurting people?_ But she can feel Scorpia’s presence next to her, feel the warm solidity of her friend’s arm in hers, and she can see the love in Adora’s eyes.

Maybe things are going to turn out okay after all.


End file.
